


Monster

by ShadowHaloedAngel



Series: Then and Now [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Angst, Bruce has such depressing tags, Canonical Child Abuse, Foster Care, Internalised guilt, Murder, Past Child Abuse, So much angst, Transformation, none of these things are explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 22:18:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2325167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowHaloedAngel/pseuds/ShadowHaloedAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Banner spent most of his life rejecting his father's assertion that he was a monster, only to be proven completely wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster

Long before he had ever been a part of the army's experiments, Bruce Banner had learned what it meant to be a monster. Not only that, but he learned that he was one. Of course, learning did not mean understanding. He had never been able to understand what darkness there was inside of him that only his father could see, what made him deserving of all the beatings. It had taken him a long time to understand. It had taken him until his mother was lying on the kitchen floor, body not yet cold as the blood pooled beneath her to realise that he had blood on his hands and a darkness in his soul. At that moment it had all been directed at his father, but somewhere beneath that there was a craving for yet more of those beatings, that punishment he told himself he hated, because maybe if he took enough, suffered enough, it would atone for the death of the one person who had thought him to be deserving of love.

Of course, he wasn't that lucky. The rational part of his brain took over, telling him that she would not have wanted her sacrifice to be for nothing. She would not have wanted him to stay and suffer again and again, because she had always told him, promised him, that it was not his fault, that he was worth more. She had always told him that it would be okay, but she was no longer here to make that happen. 

And so he had moved into the foster care system, going from home to home and family to family, until he had settled down long enough to get into college. He knew it was breaking the mould of a kid in care, but he had always been gifted. At the back of his mind a voice told him that was why his father had hated him, that it had been jealousy on his part, rather than anything Bruce had done which had left his mother fighting for breath until she couldn't anymore. If that was the case, then he was treading a fine line between throwing everything back in his face, rejecting everything his father had always screamed at him in showers of spittle and hails of punches, and possibly just making the situation worse. 

If this was just because he was a threat, then becoming more of a threat might do more harm than good. But he had a family around him now who believed in him, even if they weren't his by blood, and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to be the best that he could be, just to prove that he was not a monster. He was just as good as anyone else. He was normal, and the blood on his hands and the screams in his head and the ghosts in his past didn't matter anymore. He was moving on. They were wrong. They were figments of his imagination which were not supposed to rest on his conscience. 

He had graduated top of his class. He found a girlfriend, made plans for the future and went home at Christmas and Thanksgiving to see his almost family. Most nights he didn't even wake up screaming anymore - his mind was too occupied with complex equations and the fundamental questions of the universe. Searching for answers made the nightmares stop, made this new Bruce more real, and so he kept studying, taking a Masters', then a PhD. 

Then he was offered a top job with the army. It was like all those years of work had paid off, and he remembered kissing Betty goodbye every morning as the two of them headed to their separate labs. It was a dream come true; he was helping people, he was doing good, he was not a monster...

Until the day that all changed, and from the smoking wreckage of what had once been a lab, a hulking shape towered in the clearing dust, and a roar sounded out, loud enough to shake the building to its foundations while flowing green eyes stared around, scanning the area for threats. He felt rage, he felt pain, everything that Bruce had been suppressing for so long, unable or unwilling to deal with... and he roared again, while inside Bruce was screaming. 

He had tricked himself into believing he was not a monster for so long, but now... now his whole world had come crashing down around him, and the monster he had always believed himself to be disappeared into the night.


End file.
